"He is as wise
and long-sighted as though he had eaten a dragon's heart. It was he who gave
me the advice, when the English broke faith, to vent my rage upon the
hostages. Men have not yet ceased to lift their noses at me for the
unkingliness of the deed." His eyes blazed at the memory. They were not
pleasant eyes when he was angry; the blue seemed to fade from them until they
were two shining colorless pools in his brown face.
The son of Lodbrok shrugged his huge shoulders in stolid resignation; but the
wrinkled forehead of the older man became somewhat smoother. There was nothing
Jotun-like about his long, lean features, yet his expression was little
pleasanter on that account. From under his lowering shaggy brows he appeared
to see without being seen; and one distrusted his hidden eyes as a traveller
in the open distrusts a skulker in the thicket.
He said in his measured voice, "In that matter my opinion stands with Canute.
When bloodshed is unnecessary, it becomes a drawback. Craft is greatly to be
preferred. One does not cross deep snow by stamping through it on iron-shod
feet; one slides over it on skees."
Over the brown fists, the fierce bright eyes bent themselves upon him in his
turn. The biting young voice said, "It is likely that Thorkel the Tall speaks
from experience. It stands in my memory how well craft served him when he had
deserted my father for Ethelred and then became tired of the Englishman.
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